Continuously Present?
So the other day I was perusing Annie's blog and she was talking about the use of Yiddish in the present day. I commented that the Irish language is almost dead as a spoken language, she compared it to Catalan, etc, and it got me thinking. There are several ways that Irish still pervades the English spoken in Ireland, Irish words are used, conjunctions of words from Irish are used in English, etc. This reminded me of one morning on the Ray D'arcy Show when they were talking about the 'habitual or continuous present tense', or 'aimsir ghnáth-láithreach'. This is used everyday by Irish people, where instead of saying someone 'is' doing/something/somewhere, they say he/she/I 'does be' or 'do be', for example:
"He does be always down in the pub, where himself and the lads do be drinking pints all the feckin' time"
(or someting like that, also 'I do wake up every day' or 'I do go to work at ten')
This tense is used to describe something that happens habitually, every day or all the time. The use of 'does be' and 'do be' are still frowned upon/laughed at by those who are not aware that they are entirely correct as spoken by an Irish person, and it is something that has managed to stay in use despite it not being 'grammatically correct' or 'proper' (or God help us, 'the Queen's') English..
Now here's the thing. The word for 'tense' (as in present tense, past tense) in Irish is 'aimsir' (am-sher). Aimsir also means 'weather'. So when Irish people are talking about the past, present or future, conditional or continuous, anything we talk about, ever, we are always talking about the weather. Just go into a pub in Ireland sometime and you'll see how right I am.
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This reminds me of teaching English, after telling students a gazillion times that you can't use the present continuous to talk about emotions ("I like", not "I am liking") along came "Friends" and suddenly everyone was all "I'm loving this". Still, grammar rules are made to be broken, hey?
Re: discussing the weather - Eskimos have lots of word for types of snow - my feeling is we need more words for types of rain.
Posted by: annie | February 2, 2006 6:08 PM
Well Annie, in Irish it would be 'I do be liking! And about the weather, here's a few words for rain in Irish:
biadh an tsic ("food for rain") - rain in frosty weather
brádán báistí - light rain
braon - the dripping of the rain
cith agus dealán - sunshine with showers
ceóbhrán - light drizzle, mist
durach mor - a big shower
focíth fearthainne - occasional rain showers
frás- shower
fuarbháisteach earraigh - a cold Spring downpour
lá frasaidheacht - a showery day
greadadh báistí - heavy (pelting) (driving) rain
plimp fearthainne - a sudden downpour of rain
síorbháisteach - a continuous downpouring of rain
scáth báistí ("rain shield")-umbrella
smurán - a shower
stoirm ceatha - breeze before a shower
stoirm shíobhta bháistí - a driving rainstorm
taom fearthainne - a bucketing down of rain
[via languagehat.com]
Posted by: Matt | February 2, 2006 6:49 PM
What a language! So I should definitely pack my brolly if I ever visit Ireland?
Posted by: annie | February 2, 2006 8:05 PM
Put it this way: On more than one occasion, I recall there being rain when there were no clouds in the sky. That rainy enough for ya?!
Mind you, this winter has been the driest in like, forever. Way drier than last summer, when I went camping and got wetter than a really, really wet thing.
Posted by: Matt | February 2, 2006 8:22 PM